Review workshop of project “Capacity building for disaster risk prevention and business continuity planning” for TYM’s members phase 3

28/12/2018

Mr. Pham Xuan Hoe – Deputy Director of the Banking Strategy Institute – State Bank of Vietnam presented the report in the workshop

In the morning of December 26, 2018, in Hanoi, the review workshop of project “Capacity building for disaster risk prevention and business continuity planning” for TYM members was held. The workshop was attended by Mr. Pham Xuan Hoe, Deputy Director of the Banking Strategy Institute, State Bank of Vietnam and representative of Oxfam, the sponsor for the project.

“Capacity building for disaster risk prevention and business continuity planning” is a project funded by Oxfam and approved by the Presidium of the Vietnam Women’s Union. This project was implemented in 6 TYM branches in 3 coastal provinces namely Nam Dinh, Thanh Hoa and Nghe An from February 15, 2017 until now.
After 3 phases of the project implementation, TYM has completed 4 key activities built in the beginning:

1. Training – providing information to raise awareness of TYM’s staff and members about disaster risks and disaster response. Specifically:
• 185 staff was trained in knowledge: Actively reduce disaster risks and respond to climate change. These were the core trainers who conducted training for TYM’s center leaders and members in the next phases;
• 533 center leaders were trained in propaganda to raise awareness to proactively reduce natural disaster risks, protect the environment and respond to climate change;
• 64,601 TYM members at 1,892 centers of coastal areas were propagated and trained at least once to actively prevent natural disasters and protect the environment;

2. Assisted members to develop business plans including proactive disaster risk prevention plans
• 50 member households were supported and guided at home;
• 550 members were trained on Continuous Business Planning which took into account the risk factors of disaster.

3. Adjust credit rating tools including risk assessment criteria for risk recovery: TYM has completed a set of credit assessment tools with disaster risk factors from 01/2018 and has conducted training for staff at the project implementation branches.

4. Developed policy regulations to support those affected by climate disaster and climate change factors. Specifically, in 2018, TYM has completed the research and development of loans to support members affected by natural disasters and climate change to pilot in two branches namely Hai Hau and Quynh Luu from 01/01/2019.

The success of the project shows TYM’s right direction in diversifying its products, gaining more access to women and bringing them added values.

Disaster risks and climate change in recent years in Vietnam are an urgent issue, especially when the effects of extreme weather events and climate change have caused serious socio-economic damages.
Currently, TYM has 6/21 branches with coastal areas with a number of members accounting for 41% of the total membership of TYM. In these coastal areas, TYM has found that members have suffered a lot from natural disasters. They mainly have their main income from agriculture, forestry, fishery activities, most of them depend entirely on climate. In particular, the families of poor and low-income women and disadvantaged women are the most severely affected. They lack resources, knowledge, skills, and information to cope with climate change and natural disasters. Moreover, when having experienced the negative impacts of climate change, their resilience to family economy is also more difficult and taking longer than other people.
In fact, in 2016 with the marine environment incident in Ha Tinh and the sudden increase in storms hitting the East Sea in 2017, many TYM’s members living in the coastal areas born consequences of natural disasters. Many families have fallen into a state of exhaustion, poverty and life became extremely difficult.
Although, TYM has provided support and timely sharing to its members to help them overcome difficulties. But TYM realized that the best way is to help members have the knowledge, skills and tools so that they can face increasing natural disasters, and thus take measures to limit risks, build a continuous business plan, avoid seeking credit for use in emergency. Stemming from that desire from 2017, with the support of Oxfam, TYM has implemented the project to support “Capacity building for disaster risk prevention and business continuity planning” for TYM members.